Last week I was on a panel at Netroots Nation, talking about the problem of companies like Apple doing all of their manufacturing in China. We used to think companies moved to China because labor was cheap. Now we know that it has more to do with the ability to force workers to do things that they can’t force them to do here. I wrote up my talk in the post Why Can’t Apple Make Your iPhone in America?,

The business advantage China offers is not low wages, it is that in China the people do not have a say, and here people have a say.

When people have a say they say they want better pay, health care, retirement, vacations, sick pay, protections, worker safety, clean environment and taxes to support the country – things like that – the very things China offers to let our businesses escape from.

So what China offers is that China is “business-friendly.” Because people there do not have a say, so they can’t ask for the things people should have.

… When we opened up our borders to goods from China, and let this treatment of workers and the environment offer advantages to our elites, we made democracy a competitive disadvantage.

In this election, we have to send politicians a message: Good Jobs First. Turning now to austerity will only create more misery and more unemployment. The best deficit reduction measure is to put people back to work.

We have to make sure that politicians in both parties get the message. So we are coming to Washington to lay out strategies to do just that.

At the Take Back the American Dream conference, we will shatter the false boundaries of the budget debate imposed by the Washington elites. And we’ll forge the grassroots strategy necessary to rally the nation behind a jobs plan as big as the crisis.

About Dave Johnson

Dave has more than 20 years of technology industry experience. His earlier career included technical positions, including video game design at Atari and Imagic. He was a pioneer in design and development of productivity and educational applications of personal computers. More recently he helped co-found a company developing desktop systems to validate carbon trading in the US.